Ephemeral
by cardiogod
Summary: This wasn't how she thought it would happen." Post-ep for Under My Skin.


Title: Ephemeral

Author: cardiogod

Rating: PG13 for implied sexual situations

Pairing: House/Cuddy

Spoilers: Primarily for 5x23 "Under My Skin." Post-ep.

Word Count: 948

Summary: "This wasn't how she thought this would happen."

Disclaimer: House and Cuddy aren't mine; they belong to David Shore, Katie Jacobs, et all. I'm making no profit, just having fun.

Author's Note: Wrote this in the middle of the night, so it probably isn't very good or terribly coherent, but I wanted to get it out before the finale airs tomorrow and this fandom is consumed with the *squee* or whatever other reactions may come.

This wasn't how she thought it would happen. She wasn't sure she'd ever thought it would happen, not really, but the images her mind had conjured, fantasies built during languid bubble baths after long days filled with turmoil and trouble and too much paperwork, looked nothing like the reality currently poised before her.

In her lavender-scented daydreams, his mouth floods hers with nostalgia and scotch and pasta with too much garlic, eaten to spite her and to challenge her and to tease her all at the same time; he does not taste of too-bitter ginger tea, vomit, and Vicodin withdrawal. In the haze of fantasy, he is strong and lithe and not at all hobbling around trying to keep his weight off of a bad leg made infinitely sorer by lack of medication. He is healthy and whole and while never exactly happy (because she's not sure if the man has encountered happiness ever in his lifetime), he is not two steps from deaths' door as he is now.

He is rough and a little angry and their coupling is borne of years of denied passion and tempered fury and snide remarks about cleavage, cane size, and whether or not to cut out half his patients' brain; in the reality, it is still all those things, but there is another layer that she hadn't anticipated and that she can't identify, one that strikes her when the frenzy has paused for a moment and they look at each other, naked in all possible ways, and share a tender kiss that tugs at her insides before resuming the frantic pace of their lovemaking.

She lays in the aftermath, blissfully aware of the distance separating her body from his- they are not cuddlers, they do not bask together in the warm, fuzzy feelings of orgasm- and she doesn't know how she ended up here, lying next to his naked body, still shivering. She doesn't know if the shakes are caused by her, by the lack of pills, or both, but she sees them and she wonders how she could be so stupid as to take advantage of someone in as vulnerable state as he was.

He had been so good to her after Joy, giving her the connection she wanted so desperately, and ripping his body from hers before she gave herself to him in grief and sadness and neediness. She would have slept with him that night, would have moved her arms from around his neck to the button of his jeans, would have shed her own clothes on the stumbling journey into her bedroom, if they could even make it that far. She would have cried out his name through the tears of her own painful, bitter loss and clung to his body as though nothing else would keep her from drowning in her own tears.

She looks at him beside her, twitching and still somehow wrapped in the peace of sleep and she offers a silent apology for not being able to stop the way he had, for not being able to do for him what he did for her all those months ago when he walked out of her house with a hurried "Good night" and clear conscience. He had let her maintain her dignity, while she had, tonight, stripped him of his as easily as she'd stripped him of his old black t-shirt.

She wonders, briefly, if she's made a mistake, if she's been irresponsible, if he'd regret it. If she would. But the half-smile that alights on his face is one she doesn't see in daylight- innocent, unassuming- and the warmth of pride circles through her breast, knowing that his upturned lips, swollen from their fervent kisses, were because of her. He'd look at her in the morning, she knew, see the purplish mark at the swell of her left breast, and feel the same warmth. They would take pleasure in the possession of each other- her of a smile on his otherwise tormented face, him of a bit of imperfection on her otherwise flawless demeanor- and they would go back to the hostility and the snark that had led them down this path in the first place without regrets.

The moonlight bled through the curtains, illuminating slivers of flesh and mattress and comforter and she sighs, knowing that the moments she has left to see him like this are fleeting, passing with every tick of the clock, every trembling breath that falls from his lips. In two hours, she will have to rise from the bed in which they've spent the morning, afternoon and now the evening, and she will return to Rachel, to the daughter she has surprised herself by missing. She will leave the tangle of sheets, the tangle of limbs and minds and hearts, and the moment will be broken like a piece of her grandmothers' fine china dropped from the top of the Empire State Building.

She knows that the minute she leaves this room, she will be assaulted by her common sense, beating into her all of the reasons why this was a bad idea, why it couldn't continue, why she would need to set boundaries and rules, even though he'd never follow them. She would be the boss, he would be the employee. She would be firm and rational to his torrent of irrationality. She'd break both of their hearts to prevent them from something worse down the road.

But she allows herself two hours to bask, to imagine, to love, to lay beside him and pretend that this could continue forever. She looks at his smile and she traces it with her fingertips, a last caress before drifting back into lavender-scented ephemeral haze, and dreams of a flawed romance that would never be.


End file.
